Read Online Kill by Numbers: In the Wake of the Templars Book Two by Loren Rhoads - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Loren Rhoads
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force her thoughts to clear.
This sleep thing , she thought raggedly, is just not working out . No more trying to exhaust herself. From now on, she was going to stay awake as long as possible.
She squinted at the clock and realized she could probably make it to lunch if she hurried.
Mykah had outdone himself with the cooking this time. The central part of the meal was some sort of cardboard-brown noodles, over which he ladled a complex orange sauce full of bite-sized pieces of a rainbow of vegetables.
Raena watched the others, studying their techniques for eating. Mykah twirled the long pasta on his fork, shoving in huge mouthfuls at a time. Haoun merely scooped up a forkful and sucked the noodles in like long skinny worms. Coni and Vezali chopped their food so that they could manage it much more delicately.
“I don’t get it,” Raena said as she tried to wind up some of her own pasta. “I know I’ve been away for a long time and a lot has changed, but why is the media still so obsessed with Thallian? I thought there would be rejoicing that the murderer had been punished, you all would be heroes for breaking the news, then interest would wane. Everyone would move on to the next scandal.”
Haoun and Coni exchanged a glance. Mykah looked uncomfortably down at his plate. Raena sensed she had said something truly stupid, but she was honestly puzzled. She didn’t apologize.
Coni spoke first. “You noticed that it’s not human newsfolk who are calling now?”
She hadn’t paid that much attention, but Raena nodded for Coni to continue.
“Humanity’s attention has moved on. Maybe there’s an element of embarrassment or they’re disavowing him, distancing themselves from the past, but they’re done with the story. Other people in the galaxy, though, it’s more than morbid curiosity on their part. They want to understand Thallian, all the Thallians, and the Empire, too. They want to understand what drove humans to think it was acceptable to wipe out an entire people, to imagine they could do such a thing and no one would protest.”
“Thallian was a madman,” Raena said. “I thought everyone understood that.”
“But he didn’t act alone,” Haoun reminded. “The galaxy wants to know if humans are likely to do something similar again, if another madman leads them or when someone else gets in their way. They want to know if Thallian and the Empire were an anomaly or if another of you is going to take a genocidal hatred to some other species, someone even less able to protect themselves than the Templars were, and fashion a plan for wiping them all out. If humanity is going to keep killing until they’re the only species left.”
“The galaxy is still afraid of us , all these years later?”
“They haven’t had closure for very long,” Coni explained. “Thallian’s show trial was a long time ago, but people would have been more comfortable to see him tried again, in person. They wish they’d been able to hear his justifications from his own mouth, so they could judge him themselves. It would help if they could have heard how crazy he was.”
“And they sense that someone went in and wiped out the Thallians,” Raena guessed. “More indication that humans—if the assassin was human—are inherently violent and dangerous.”
There was a strained silence at the table as everyone shared the understanding that Raena had just described herself.
“They think,” Haoun said at last, “that Thallian’s death was just one more cover-up.”
“That’s why I keep doing the interviews,” Mykah said quietly. “Because I want the galaxy to understand that Thallian was an aberration. Those of us humans who survive in the galaxy today reject the kind of xenophobia that conceived of the Templar plague. I am not like the Thallians, and by extension, other humans are not like them.”
Raena remembered Sloane’s casual sale of the Templar artifacts his men had looted from the tombworld. Humans First!
This sleep thing , she thought raggedly, is just not working out . No more trying to exhaust herself. From now on, she was going to stay awake as long as possible.
She squinted at the clock and realized she could probably make it to lunch if she hurried.
Mykah had outdone himself with the cooking this time. The central part of the meal was some sort of cardboard-brown noodles, over which he ladled a complex orange sauce full of bite-sized pieces of a rainbow of vegetables.
Raena watched the others, studying their techniques for eating. Mykah twirled the long pasta on his fork, shoving in huge mouthfuls at a time. Haoun merely scooped up a forkful and sucked the noodles in like long skinny worms. Coni and Vezali chopped their food so that they could manage it much more delicately.
“I don’t get it,” Raena said as she tried to wind up some of her own pasta. “I know I’ve been away for a long time and a lot has changed, but why is the media still so obsessed with Thallian? I thought there would be rejoicing that the murderer had been punished, you all would be heroes for breaking the news, then interest would wane. Everyone would move on to the next scandal.”
Haoun and Coni exchanged a glance. Mykah looked uncomfortably down at his plate. Raena sensed she had said something truly stupid, but she was honestly puzzled. She didn’t apologize.
Coni spoke first. “You noticed that it’s not human newsfolk who are calling now?”
She hadn’t paid that much attention, but Raena nodded for Coni to continue.
“Humanity’s attention has moved on. Maybe there’s an element of embarrassment or they’re disavowing him, distancing themselves from the past, but they’re done with the story. Other people in the galaxy, though, it’s more than morbid curiosity on their part. They want to understand Thallian, all the Thallians, and the Empire, too. They want to understand what drove humans to think it was acceptable to wipe out an entire people, to imagine they could do such a thing and no one would protest.”
“Thallian was a madman,” Raena said. “I thought everyone understood that.”
“But he didn’t act alone,” Haoun reminded. “The galaxy wants to know if humans are likely to do something similar again, if another madman leads them or when someone else gets in their way. They want to know if Thallian and the Empire were an anomaly or if another of you is going to take a genocidal hatred to some other species, someone even less able to protect themselves than the Templars were, and fashion a plan for wiping them all out. If humanity is going to keep killing until they’re the only species left.”
“The galaxy is still afraid of us , all these years later?”
“They haven’t had closure for very long,” Coni explained. “Thallian’s show trial was a long time ago, but people would have been more comfortable to see him tried again, in person. They wish they’d been able to hear his justifications from his own mouth, so they could judge him themselves. It would help if they could have heard how crazy he was.”
“And they sense that someone went in and wiped out the Thallians,” Raena guessed. “More indication that humans—if the assassin was human—are inherently violent and dangerous.”
There was a strained silence at the table as everyone shared the understanding that Raena had just described herself.
“They think,” Haoun said at last, “that Thallian’s death was just one more cover-up.”
“That’s why I keep doing the interviews,” Mykah said quietly. “Because I want the galaxy to understand that Thallian was an aberration. Those of us humans who survive in the galaxy today reject the kind of xenophobia that conceived of the Templar plague. I am not like the Thallians, and by extension, other humans are not like them.”
Raena remembered Sloane’s casual sale of the Templar artifacts his men had looted from the tombworld. Humans First!
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